The Virginian

Saturday, July 31, 2010

More Questions About the Cordoba Mosque

Claudia Rosett has done a little digging and has focussed on one of the most important issues surrounding the building of a Mosque at Ground Zero: where is the money coming from.

To find out, she tracked down "Iman Faisal." It appears that he has ducked out of sight and has resurfaced in Kuala Lumpur, byt when called there he quickly hung up.

Another interesting thing about his foundation. He's said he'll produce $100 million. But here's a quick look at his foundation's finances

Rauf's Cordoba Initiative was set up in Colorado in 2004 as a small, tax-exempt foundation. Over the first five years, the Initiative in its U.S. 2008 federal tax return reported receiving donations totaling less than $100,000. Here we are two years later, and the same foundation, hand-in-hand with another hitherto small foundation, the American Society for Muslim Advancement, run by Rauf and his wife out of the same New York office, has hooked up with a real estate developer named Sharif El-Gamal.

Has he won the lottery? Who's really behind this and who's supplying the money? Are all Arab Imams filthy rich?

Claudia Rosett is asking the questions that Bloomberg and the MFM should be asking ...

Whose show is this, anyway? ... Some Americans are left grieving afresh, and many are left guessing, while the mysteries multiply. At least part of the answer lies in such details as where is the money coming from. For that matter, where is Imam Feisal looking for it? And when will he make himself available to tell us all about it?

I would like to think that there would come a time and place of healing, but the secrecy - and the name Cordoba House - does not bode well for this project.

Friday, July 30, 2010

The number defies logic. Yet there it is, in the LA Times, for all the world to see: 787,637. That's the annual salary for Robert Rizzo. He's not a lawyer or a corporate exec. According to the the Times, he's the city administrator for Bell, one of the poorest towns in Los Angeles County (map).

Rizzo isn't the only one with a big fat paycheck. Two other Bell employees are pulling in astronomical incomes. Assistant City Manager Angela Spaccia makes $376,288 and Police Chief Randy Adams makes $457,000.

To put things in perspective, the Times listed the annual salaries of other public servants who have to run bigger places like Los Angeles, California and, oh, the United States. Here's a rundown of salaries:

Since the story ran last week, the county D.A.'s office and the state are opening investigations, while Rizzo, Spaccia and Adams are quitting. And while they won't get severance packages, Rizzo is entitled to a state pension of $650,000 a year for life.

Frank J. Fleming has noticed what I'm sure you have noticed too: when "Science" says something you better do it.

Has Science! become more authoritarian causing people to distrust it? Apparently in Science! reporting, there has been a sharp increase in the use of the phrase “Science! says we must”, and people are beginning to feel that Science! is just pushing them around. And here are some other phrases that have increased in recent years in Science! reporting:

* Science! says we must

* Science! tells us we should

* Science! requires

* Bow down before Science!

* The power of Science! compels you

* Blaspheme to Science! will be noted and punished

* Science! demands your obedience and loyalty

* Do you dare speak before almighty Science!

* Kneel before Science!

* Science! shall crush you

* Foolish mortal! How dare you question Science!

* You have angered Science! and will pay dearly for it

From now on when I hear Science say something I'm going to give Science the finger.

Greece has disappeared from the headlines since Greek Communists stopped burning people alive. But Greece has not disappeared.

It might have disappeared from the notoriously parochial British media, but it is still there – Greece, that is. And their problems have not been resolved. In fact, they seem to be getting worse. The current round of troubles started a few days ago when the nation's lorry drivers announced their intention to go on indefinite strike today over plans to open up their sector to new licenses, opening up the transport business to new entrants.

Those "no big deal" Wickileaks

Via Belmont Club

CBS News reports that Times of London reporters “scanning the [Wikileaks] reports for just a couple hours found hundreds of Afghan names mentioned as aiding the U.S.-led war effort.”

Recently Radio Netherlands described what Afghans who are suspected by the Taliban can expect to endure. The Taliban have cut off the hands of construction workers who build government-funded projects; sent a suicide car bomb against a district chief believed to have been working with US special forces. Death in many forms will be their lot. One informant Radio Netherlands described “holds a thick yellow sheet tightly around his face” to preserve his anonymity. Now it turns out he shouldn’t have bothered. If the London Times is right, his name might be one of the several hundred the British reporter has found in just a few hours.

Yet the dead are the lucky ones. The more unfortunate may wind up in a torture chamber similar to one found by Coldstream Guards. It features such amenities as chains to hang prisoners from walls. Not that the inmates would want to walk on the floor: that features broken glass. And there is limb amputation, kneecapping with an electric drill, eye gouging, bone-breaking or ritual rape to smash the will. Where the offender is not himself available punishment will be visited on his relatives.

It would be cosmic justice if a son or daughter of one of those Afghans who dies as a result of Julian Assange's self absorbed obsession were to hunt down and kill this little bastard, slowly and painfully. I, for one, would not mourn.

Dogs catching treat

TIME magazine says Rush is right ... watch out for flying pigs.

At Ace of Spades we find a link to a TIME magazine article which - while it calls Rush "obnoxious anti-environmentalist" - has admitted that Rush is right about the extent of the environmental effects of the Gulf oil spill.

Limbaugh has a point. The Deepwater Horizon explosion was an awful tragedy for the 11 workers who died on the rig, ...But so far ... it does not seem to be inflicting severe environmental damage. "The impacts have been much, much less than everyone feared," says geochemist Jacqueline Michel, a federal contractor who is coordinating shoreline assessments in Louisiana.

Yes, the spill killed birds — but so far, less than 1% of the number killed by the Exxon Valdez spill in Alaska 21 years ago. Yes, we've heard horror stories about oiled dolphins — but so far, wildlife-response teams have collected only three visibly oiled carcasses of mammals. Yes, the spill prompted harsh restrictions on fishing and shrimping, but so far, the region's fish and shrimp have tested clean, and the restrictions are gradually being lifted. And yes, scientists have warned that the oil could accelerate the destruction of Louisiana's disintegrating coastal marshes — a real slow-motion ecological calamity — but so far, assessment teams have found only about 350 acres of oiled marshes, when Louisiana was already losing about 15,000 acres of wetlands every year.

Now, the despicable bottom feeding scumbag Michael Grunwald no doubt used Limbaugh's name simply to call Rush obnoxious, but we wonder why a government lapdog like TIME would carry a story like this. And then it occurs to me that this is one way of taking the heat off Obama because it's now no longer possible to pretend that Team Obama acted competently after the well blew up. So if the spill is now big deal, Obama's failure is no big deal.

It's the new media theme, if Team Obama screws up "X," "X" is no big deal.

UPDATE: Jonah Goldberg reminds us that what nature and BP did in the Gulf is mild compared to what Obama did. That's the REAL disaster.

The greatest damage from the Deepwater Horizon disaster (and yes, even with the hype-deflation, it's still a disaster) has been from government. The drilling ban imposed by the administration, against the counsel of the sort of "sound science" Obama usually sanctifies, has been devastating to the region, costing thousands of jobs and untold millions in lost revenues and taxes. That's definitely something the people couldn't have done better for themselves.

Meanwhile, if Obama is serious about driving America forward to a green economy "even if we don't yet know precisely how we're going to get there," he will take the Gulf region devastation on the road, destroying good jobs across the country (the oil and gas industry pays twice the national average) and replacing them with bad ones. He will replace cheap energy with expensive energy. (During the campaign, he promised that his plan would cause electricity rates to "skyrocket.") He will place bets on unproven technologies while discarding proven ones. In short, he will nationalize a disastrous disaster policy.

Scott Johnson at Powerline revisits the great debate between kings and free men; between the Left and modern Conservatives.

The economic "rights" asserted by Roosevelt in his second Bill of Rights differ and conflict with the right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. They are claims on the liberty of others. If I have a right to medical care, you must have a corresponding duty to supply it. If I have a right to a decent home, you must have a duty to provide it.

The argument for the welfare state belongs in the same family as "the arguments that kings have made for enslaving the people in all ages of the world. You will find that all the arguments in favor of king-craft were of this class; they always bestrode the necks of the people, not that they wanted to do it, but because the people were better off for being ridden." That's Lincoln again.

Lincoln memorably derided the underlying principle as "the same old serpent that says you work and I eat, you toil and I will enjoy the fruits of it."

Politico might be an online publication, a part of the New Media, but when it comes to corrupted, left-wing arrogance they make the Washington Post look somewhat honest … somewhat. Part of the reason I reserve a special place in my heart to store up a unique resentment for all things Politico is due to the very fact that they practice their dark arts online. Like a toxic virus they spread over to the Internet where the right (by design) and the left (by accident) are trying to forever kill off the very thing Politico is — wolfish left-wing propagandists hidden in the sheeps’ clothing of “journalism.”

Wednesday, July 28, 2010

No violence please, we’re Americans.

Remember the last “good war?” Everyone now knows that six million Jews were killed by the Nazis during World War 2, that millions of Soviets were killed and more millions killed by the Japanese in China. An uncle of mine died in a Japanese prison camp. But how was the war fought by the good side?

Other than about 5 million military casualties inflicted on Germany and Japan (not counting the other Axis powers) we managed to kill a very large number of civilians. These include about 2 million Japanese civilians and 800,000 German civilians while the Soviets killed about 3.6 million more. And let no one pretend that these deaths were accidental. Civilians were targeted by both sides.

My father tells the story about being caught in the cross-fire between an Allied fighter and a German anti-aircraft gun hidden in some trees alongside a country road in Holland. Those casualty figures do not count civilians killed by “friendly fire” in German occupied Europe, and there were plenty of those as the Allied armies crossed Europe from the Atlantic until they got to the German border. One source puts the number of civilians killed by the Allies just in France at 67,078 men women and children with another 100,000 injured.

Of course these were negligible compared to the war waged against civilians by the Soviets. In Berlin alone they killed 1.2 million Germans and raped about 2 million women, most multiple times.

That was the good war. If anyone should think that this war was particularly brutal, that person is no student of history. Genghis Khan has come down to us in history for his leaving mounds of skulls to terrify his enemies and he only had bows, swords and spears to work with. The Romans, no barbarians they, knew no better way to conquer their enemies than to wipe them out. Julius Caesar conducted his Gallic wars by killing hundreds of thousands of the native tribes – including their women and children – and selling many of the rest into slavery.

On this continent, our wars were brutal and thorough. The Indians were nearly wiped out and their remains were settled into reservations. The South was so devastated during the Civil War that it took over a century of peace to recover.

Americans believe that going to war meant going to win; and that “war is hell.” But all that began to change during Viet Nam when the Left chose to use their opposition to the war by accusing the American of atrocities. So today in Liberal-land, war is “heck.” Our ruling class has decided that it had better not be hell and the destruction that once defined war can not occur. War is now waged as social reform by armed members of an expendable group whose real purpose us moral uplift. Men who are given medals for NOT firing their weapons. Our betters will attend the funerals of slain Americans as part of their media photo-ops. But woe to the unlucky pilot or soldier who harms the enemy civilian. There is no more sure way of getting the ruling class’ approval than finding an American serviceman who makes a mistake. The entire mainstream media is obsessed with finding military mishaps.

War always was and always will be a horror, where killing and destruction is the means to achieving the political objective. It should not be entered into lightly, but once begun, it should be pursued with the objective of winning as quickly and decisively as possible. To do otherwise is a crime against the people sent to fight. To pretend otherwise is immoral since it guarantees just enough bloodshed to fail.

A personal incident has given me a particular perspective on recent news about the media. Last Tuesday, I received word that the French release of my thriller novel Empire of Lies had been canceled by publisher Seuil Policiers. The editor who originally bought the book had left the French company, and the new editor, my agent says, feels that “she can not publish . . . because of the political and religious aspects of the story.” This, even though it’s in breach of a contract for which I’ve been paid in full. Empire of Lies features a politically conservative Christian protagonist, Jason Harrow, who believes he has uncovered an Islamist terrorist plot being obscured by the leftist mainstream media. “Lies, lies, lies,” the emotionally troubled Harrow murmurs at his television set. “It’s all about what they don’t say.” It will come as no surprise that my friend Andrew Breitbart praised the book as the only thriller he’d ever read in which the mainstream media were the villains.

The book’s French cancellation is, I realize, a rather small cultural event. Yet it gives specific color to the recent revelations on the Daily Caller website that left-wing journalists conspired to suppress scandals that might harm Barack Obama and to the brouhaha over Breitbart’s online release of a video that resulted in a government worker’s momentarily losing her job. In both stories, one thing leaps out at me: everywhere, the Left favors fewer voices and less information, and conservatives favor more. Everywhere, the Left seeks to disappear its opposition, whereas the Right is willing to meet them head-on.

Tuesday, July 27, 2010

Keep tenure or academics will hire incompetents.

In a recent post, Orin (relying on an argument by H. Lorne Carmichael) cites faculty self-selection as an argument for tenure:

The basic idea is that tenure is a necessary evil because faculties vote on who to let join them: If professors know that their own jobs will be in jeopardy if they hire someone better than themselves, they will make sure that they only hire incompetent new people.

This is indeed a much stronger argument for tenure than the usual academic freedom rationale, which I criticized here. Still, I’m not persuaded.

The Volokh Conspiracy is a lawblog which seems to attract legal profs, lawyers and a smattering of other academics. That tenure is required to keep professors from hiring incompetents seems to be such an argument against interest - the ethics of academics - that I though it would be ridiculed. But no; Somin doesn't say that academics would do no such thing ... he says he's not persuaded.

In this time of high unemployment and many threats abroad, our biggest problem is imaginary racism.

So apparently Sherrod hasn’t learned a single lesson about baseless charges of racism. You can charge Breitbart with being an irresponsible political hack, but to say he want to bring the country back to the time of slavery you have to be a loony toon.

Sunday, July 25, 2010

The Media Don't Want America to Understand Shirley Sherrod

It didn't take long for the MFM to understand that Shirley Sherrod is a loose cannon. The narrative that the media and the rest of the Democrats has prepared was that Shirley was a sainted black woman who had overcome her racial prejudices. She was supposed to be the victim of an unfair racist attack by the Right wing bomb thrower Andrew Breitbart. Since most people don’t go to original sources, like the video that Breitbart provided, or the longer video that the NAACP provided, the MFM has been able to get away with lying. The problem for the media is that Shirley refused to play her part. Every time she opened her mouth, she revealed herself as a racist, leftist bigot. She was the reincarnation of “Mother Sheehan” in blackface.

That was not going to allow the MFM to tell their story, so this Sunday, the woman who dominated the airwaves this last week, was not allowed to expose herself on the Sunday talk shows.

It’s going to be interesting to see if it’s possible for the MFM to carry the Shirley Sherrod tale while keeping her under wraps. Somehow, I doubt it. The Iron Curtain of media censorship is now too permeable.

Earlier this week a handful of people in the blogosphere began to speculate Sherrod would pull off a “full Ginsburg,” or become only the thirteenth person to appear on all major Sunday talk-shows on the same day since the feat was first accomplished by William H. Ginsburg in 1998. However, this was before a clip of Sherrod suggesting Andrew Breitbart wants blacks “stuck back in the times of slavery” went viral. Sherrod also drew extensive criticism late in the week for blasting Fox News as racist.

Considering the Shirley Sherrod interview barrage that took place last Thursday, to not see Sherrod on television Sunday morning sends a clear signal the mainstream media no longer feels allowing the public to get to know the real Shirley Sherrod advances their agenda.

Is it permissible to ridicule Jihad?

Stewart Baker at the Volokh conspiracy, pens an essay Will jihad jump the shark? in which he points out that it's becoming the "in" thing in certain circles to adopt Jihad as a fashion statment.

We’ve seen a rash of homegrown Islamist terrorists in recent years, and there has been a lot of agonizing about why. One explanation that I haven’t seen elsewhere still strikes me as plausible: The attraction that adolescents and the disaffected feel toward groups that their parents and teachers fear. If you’re feeling marginalized, after all, why not choose the margin? And while you’re at it, why not choose a marginalized group that inspires fear and unease on the part of mainstream society? At least then you’ll get a kind of respect.

In the past fifty years, adolescents have joined a host of marginalized groups their parents found dangerous – juvenile delinquents, mods and rockers, punks, skinheads, and Goths. So why not jihadis? Islamist terror certainly scares authority figures; why wouldn’t Western adolescents and misfits be attracted to violent Islamism — at least as a symbolic stance?

I’m sure that’s not the only explanation for the appeal of homegrown Islamist extremism to a handful of youngsters in this country.

He concludes:

Mockery may turn out to be the key to breaking the movement. That’s what finally destroyed the mystique of the KKK.

Well, perhaps, but I doubt it. There's one good reason why mockery won't be the path to making Jihad infashionable: the Political Correctness Police won't have it..

People who make fun of Islam and Ismlamists are typically called bigots or, illogically, racists by the sanctimonious people who infest government and the media. Islamists, and therefore Sharia and jihad, have protected status nowadays (just ask NASA) and it’s very naughty to make fun of them.

The Washington Examiner points out, correctly, that the Federal Government has as a matter of policy instituted racial discrimination even as those who instituted these policies denounced racial discrimination.

... instead of upholding a colorblind society, the federal government has for decades imposed a multitude of racial preferences throughout the economy, especially in the areas of employment and contracting. For example, Neil Barofsky, special inspector general for the Troubled Asset Relief Program, found that the Obama administration used race and gender as criteria to decide which auto dealerships would be closed.

We are now a full half century from the 1960s when full integration was the goal. We have moved a long way, but in the journey,we have taken a bad turn. Part of it was well intentioned, giving the disenfranchised and those discriminated against a helping hand. But ... and here's the tragedy, an entire movement sprang up whose revenue and power sources were dependent on forever abrading the scab of racism; never allowing it to heal. Open and active racism by white against black is now so rare as to be newsworthy. And it's rare because not only can it get you arrested, but more importantly for most people it can get you shunned.

Unfortunately, that not the case with the racists of the Black community, the Liberals Leftists of the JournoList type, or the mainstream of the Democrat Party. There has been, until now, no public shaming of the people on this group. People here make a good living peddling their hate and get re-elected based on their lies.

Until this movement experiences the shunning that white racists experienced after the 1960s, we can expect the honest discussion of race to be postponed.

Kathleen Oarker on the media coccoon: "It is no fun writing about friends and colleagues"

Kathleen Parker is identified as "Conservative" by Liberals. Here's why: she protects the Left while attacking the Right. You don't have to go past any one article she writes for evidence. Regarding JournoList, her take is:

...weak tea -- a tempest in Barbie's teacup.

Keep in mind that this really is not being covered by the MFM, and Chatty Kathy knows it so she explains for the Washington Post reader who's totally ignorant about the scandal.

For the millions who have no idea what I'm talking about...

Along the way she takes the time to relegate the biggest cable news network to obscurity:

...it was a consortium of far lesser-known folks (academics, mid- to low-level producers, etc.) who enjoyed the camaraderie of the like-minded.

In the conservative world, we call such people Fox News. (Just kidding, guys, but really.)

This is the sort of thing that gets Kathy bedded in Liberal Land.

Of course JournoList would not be given space at all in the Washington Post (one of its "journalists" Ezra Klein, created the list) if Kathy were going to be critical. So here's the reason why we should "just move along, nothing to see here folks." It's the one-size-fits-all reason to ignore the obvious:

...some also have been presented out of context and, besides, were offered as part of an ongoing argument among colleagues who believed they were acting in good faith that theirs was a private conversation.

Chatty Kathy then goes on to bemoan how terrible it is that "private" conversations about, say watching Limbaugh die, should ever see the light of day. Besides, she avers, these 400 were lowly worker bees, totally unimportant in the world of the MFM.

Pace Kathy, here’s why it’s important to know what these people were saying – in private. First, not one of their defenders is making the case that the ideas expressed by the JournoListers were anything other than mainstream Liberal views. So we have an insight into what Liberals tell each other when they don’t believe the world is watching. These are the minds and the concepts that shape the worldview we get when we read, or watch or listen to the MFM.

There is also something that’s true about human nature and that’s this: our public morality is always higher than our private morality. That also applies to our private vs. our public viewpoints. It’s when you give the private Caligula power that you have a problem. The people on JournoList are exposed as people who wish to engage in conspiracies to destroy Conservatives by making purely false accusations of racism. We see how that’s working out beyond the JournoList network. One – a law Professor – wants to shut down Fox New. Think he’s the only one? One wants to see Rush Limbaugh die a horrible death while she laughs. Think she’s the only one? Ever hear about the resurrection of the Fairness Doctrine that would drive Limbaugh off the air?

Make no mistake, despite Chatty Kathy’s crocodile tears about the awfulness of publishing the JournoList archives, despite her protestations that these people were nobodies, this is a view into the “media Left” that’s very instructive to people – primarily moderates – who never believed in behind-the-scene cabals or the maliciousness of the Liberal community.

Saturday, July 24, 2010

Breitbart Responds

Q: Ann Coulter was on Fox recently, saying you were "set up," meaning that someone intentionally provided you with a selectively edited copy of Shirley Sherrod's speech. Were you taken advantage of?

A: I don't believe that I was set up. [The person who provided the video clip of Sherrod's NAACP speech] contacted me back in early April and sent me a DVD, but it didn't transfer properly... I never followed up on it, but I had it in the back of my mind that [Sherrod's comments at the NAACP] occurred. So I contacted him [the video source] after two or three days of the mainstream media's colluding with the NAACP [which passed a resolution condemning racist elements within the Tea Party], giving wall-to-wall coverage, negatively branding the Tea Party as racist. I got the tape in two excerpts that were sent to me, because I couldn't wait to get this story. I knew from past experience that I had a news cycle to get this out.

Q: You say you couldn't wait to get this story out. Was it your past experience challenging the allegations that someone at a D.C. Tea Party rally used a racial epithet that informed your decision?

A: I couldn't get any mainstream media to cover that story [Breitbart's offer of $100,000], even though they played up the 'n word' allegation. And so, given that we were in day seven of this successful propaganda campaign asking the question, 'Is the Tea Party racist?' -- and because the standard they set was that someone in an audience expressing a racist thought -- like at the Tea Party it was often based merely on an infiltrator holding a [offensive or racist] sign -- the (Sherrod) video was evidence. You had people in the audience abiding by her discriminating against a white farmer -- clapping and agreeing. That is a [liberal organizer [Saul] Alinsky standard -- hold the opposition to the standard that they set.

Q: How does the Shirley Sherrod story relate to the JournoList story where liberal journalist Spencer Ackerman suggested deflecting attention from the Reverend Wright story, which was hurting Obama, by wrongly accusing a prominent conservative of being a racist?

A: That collusion to slander by Ackerman -- and the sin of omission of the other 400 people on the list -- to abide by that calculated evil -- shows that we have a tremendous problem in journalism today -- and then they come and ask me about my tactics. I'm trying to end JournoList collusion that goes well beyond the (listserve's founder) Washington Post's Ezra Klein's 400 friends and collaborators, and that includes Politico and Bloomberg. Where are they firing people? Where are the questions about this monumental act of journalistic fraud? Where are the mass firings?

Q: Do you feel like you made a mistake by rushing to get the Shirley Sherrod video out too soon, though?

A: It had to be done at the exact moment in time that the press would notice it ... I grant her that she had her redemptive transformation. I said that her humanity caused her to help the farmer, and that it's not just about race. Notice how the press conspicuously ignores that. It's in the video and it's in the text [of Breitbart's original post on the topic]. Who is doing the selective editing here? This is about destroying me. This is about the NAACP, but they've made it about me versus her. This is about exposing the Democratic Party and the progressive strategy of framing opposition to the Democratic Party agenda as racist.

Q: So you don't regret how the Shirley Sherrod video story played out?

A: The only regret I have is that the NAACP had the video and didn't look at it. And the White House went after Shirley and could have looked at the video -- and read my piece -- and said that she had a transformation . . . But the NAACP and the White House are the ones who rushed to judgment. The reason the press refuses to explore the possibilities behind why the USDA and the White House moved so swiftly to 'can' Shirley -- Congressman Steve King points to the Pigford settlement [of a discrimination suit against the Department of Agriculture], and Shirley Sherrod's involvement in it. There are major allegations of monumental fraud there. The last thing the administration wants is an investigation into Pigford.

Q: Fox News has been criticized for airing the video and for pushing this story. Do you believe that Fox jumped the gun by running with this story before seeing the full video and putting her words in context?

A: The excerpt that started this, to this day, is newsworthy. It served the purpose of showing there was a double standard between the NAACP accusing the Tea Party. It is the White House -- I reiterate -- it is the White House and [Agriculture Secretary] Tom Vilsack and the NAACP who did not do their due diligence. [That] or they are worried about the political implications of drawing attention to somebody involved in a very controversial matter...

Q: Anything else folks should know about this or about Andrew Breitbart?

A: Believe it or not, one of my primary motives on this planet is to stop this racism, and to stop the Democratic Party's use of race that divides us intentionally. Google me and Clarence Thomas. I went from left to right because I watched this tactic happen to him and I aligned myself with black conservatives. Free thinkers recognize the Democratic Party will do or say anything to instill fear into black Democratic voters...Shirley Sherrod in that video said those who disagree with Obamacare are coming from a racist point of view. That is a troubling racist sentiment.

Go ask black Tea Party candidate Cedra Crenshaw -- who was thrown off the ballot in Illinois on a technicality long before this story broke. We mounted an effort to get her back on the ballot that raised tens of thousands [of dollars]. She says we were the ones that successfully got her back on the ballot. Why doesn't the media give Cedra a call and talk about my passion about making the Tea Party as inclusive as humanly possible? Why doesn't the media ask "Uni-Tea," a minority-based Tea Party event that I'm speaking to on July 31, and that I committed to long before this story broke why I do what I do -- and why I am so passionate about it? But the JournoListers aren't about getting to the truth -- they are out to destroy their political enemy in the name of objective journalism.

Big bad oil

Excerpt: In your text, treat Africa as if it were one country. It is hot and dusty with rolling grasslands and huge herds of animals and tall, thin people who are starving. Or it is hot and steamy with very short people who eat primates. Don't get bogged down with precise descriptions. Africa is big: fifty-four countries, 900 million people who are too busy starving and dying and warring and emigrating to read your book. The continent is full of deserts, jungles, highlands, savannahs and many other things, but your reader doesn't care about all that, so keep your descriptions romantic and evocative and unparticular.

Make sure you show how Africans have music and rhythm deep in their souls, and eat things no other humans eat. Do not mention rice and beef and wheat; monkey-brain is an African's cuisine of choice, along with goat, snake, worms and grubs and all manner of game meat. Make sure you show that you are able to eat such food without flinching, and describe how you learn to enjoy it—because you care.

Taboo subjects: ordinary domestic scenes, love between Africans (unless a death is involved), references to African writers or intellectuals, mention of school-going children who are not suffering from yaws or Ebola fever or female genital mutilation.

Throughout the book, adopt a sotto voice, in conspiracy with the reader, and a sad I-expected-so-much tone. Establish early on that your liberalism is impeccable, and mention near the beginning how much you love Africa, how you fell in love with the place and can't live without her. Africa is the only continent you can love—take advantage of this. If you are a man, thrust yourself into her warm virgin forests. If you are a woman, treat Africa as a man who wears a bush jacket and disappears off into the sunset. Africa is to be pitied, worshipped or dominated. Whichever angle you take, be sure to leave the strong impression that without your intervention and your important book, Africa is doomed.

And this is critical in writing about Africa:

Always end your book with Nelson Mandela saying something about rainbows or renaissances. Because you care.

For a perfct example of the kind of thing that Binyavanga Wainaina refers to, here's Oprah Winfrey in her arrival in Africa:

The first time I set foot on African soil, I knew I had returned home. It was a powerful experience coming back to the land of bones. It felt like a return to myself.

A lot of African Americans live with the eternal question of "who am I really?" The answer resounded in my spirit with profound clarity the moments I saw an African child smile. Those were my eyes, my lips, my face. And when I first heard African children singing, I knew that not only was I home, but that I would come back to this land again and again. There is a bond that runs very deep between my primal self and the children of Africa. It is a relationship that exists beyond words and one that is reinforced every time I plant my feet in the land of my ancestors. The children of Africa are, to quote scripture, "bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh." Gordon Clark's work crystallizes this connection as he juxtaposes familiar faces and expressions against a barren and inhospitable landscape. Indeed what Clark accomplishes is to capture the essence of Africa's beautiful and amazing people set against a geography of challenge.

We on the dark continent are familiar by now with the spectacle of the prostrate African American celebrity, kissing the soil from which they were spawned. "Don't put your lips there," we want to say. "I just saw a bergie wander away zipping up his pants and... oh, never mind." Because deep down we know that maybe we'll get a multimillion dollar school out of the connection, even if said connection was say, a good 7000km away in West Africa somewhere.

So I really thought that Oprah Winfrey was parodying those kind of sentiment in the foreword to South African photographer, Gordon Clark's book "Transitions".

"Ha ha ha!" I chortled with delight. "'There is a bond that runs very deep between my primal self and the children of Africa,'" I quoted. "This is good stuff."

But no, oh no. The Queen of chat and purveyor of pseudoscience medicinal quackery is as ever all the more terrifying because she's sincere. She really does take herself so seriously that she would dedicate 80% of the foreword to an amazing photographer's work with the most self-indulgent and vainglorious crap - and throw him a bone of congratulations at the end for "crystallizing" her connection. Er, actually the book is a treasure box of gorgeous images from across the continent - not a tribute to your confused sense of identity.

Good God! Barack Obama is Chauncey Gardiner!

Kathleen Parker is an incurable Liberal suck-up but her latest column Voters elevate the ordinary has an inkling of what happened to the United States. Kathleen, poor thing, has a good thought, but when she takes it out to play, she lets it get away from her.

It’s all about “Being There,” a book that became a movie starring Peter Sellers. According to Parker, Chauncey Gardiner, the genial but retarded gardener from “Being There” is Alvin Green.

And that’s the point at which Parker’s though begins to run off.

Alvin Green, the man who won the nomination to be the Democrat Senate candidate from South Carolina, who didn’t campaign and is totally unknown, is not, despite Parker’s desire to enlist him in her story, a Chauncey Gardiner model.

Parker:

“Being There” is the tall tale of a gardener who becomes a favorite to run for U.S. president following an unlikely series of misunderstandings.

The first occurs when Chauncey is turned out of the mansion where he has lived (and gardened) his whole life upon his benefactor’s death. When someone asks his name, “Chance the Gardener” is heard as “Chauncey Gardiner.” Thereafter, everyone Gardiner meets projects his or her own needs and expectations onto this kind but empty-headed “nobody.” In their minds, Gardiner is the wealthy aristocrat they need him to be, his mundane gardening observations sublime metaphors filled with timeless wit and wisdom.

If you have heard or read about Alvin Green, you know he really is an “empty headed nobody.” But no one believes otherwise. No one thinks of him as an aristocrat. No one interprets his words as wisdom. The big mystery about Green, who lives with his father, is how he managed to get the money to file his candidacy.

But a light bulb went in my head as Parker brought my memory back that movie. Something I wrote nearly two years ago that was spot on: The Accidental Candidate. Who is it that so many people projected their needs and expectations onto? Who said vapid and meaningless things that people chose to interpret as wise and profound? Who was said to speak in “sublime metaphors” that people interpreted as timeless wit and wisdom? Who said the words that made so many people believe that “HopeN’Change” was a program for a better, more prosperous America? Who told us that with his election the oceans would recede and the planet would heal? Who is revealed as “empty-headed”and totally clueless when it comes to meeting the country’s problems?

Friday, July 23, 2010

I always love it when these people get a dose of their own medicine because they can't take it. So she said "made poorly considered remarks about Rush Limbaugh to what I believed was a private e-mail discussion group from my personal e-mail account. As a publicist, I realize more than anyone that is no excuse for irresponsible behavior. I apologize to anyone I may have offended and I regret these comments greatly; they do not reflect the values by which I conduct my life." Now, that simple isn't true. She said it, she wrote it, she stood by it. Why apologize? Sarah, this is where you people just flummox me. You wrote it. You meant it. Stand by it. She apologizes to "anyone I may have offended and I regret these comments." She doesn't regret 'em, and she hasn't apologized to me. She just apologized to anybody she "may have offended," but why apologize in the first place? She's buckling to pressure. She meant to say it.

She meant it. (interruption) What, Snerdley? What? (interruption) I don't know who is pressuring her to apologize. I have no idea who's pressuring here. You'd have to ask her. But I don't know why she's apologizing. She meant it! Stand by it. She knows damn well she meant it. Everybody on that website, in that listserv, meant everything they wrote. It's just fascinating to see they don't have the guts to stand by it. So that's my reaction. If you want to know what I think about it, that's it. (interruption) If she apologized to me directly? I don't know what I would do, but... (sigh) (interruption) Well, yes, I know I'd be gracious, but I'd just... (interruption) Well, I don't know if it will ever happen, but the point is that the latest trend in apologies, "That's not who I really am." You know, "That's not the person I am." Bull! It is who you are! You are a commie! You are a full-fledged Marxist liberal! You do wish I was dead. It is who you are.

Tom Maguire notes correctly that there are at least a few genuine psychos in JournoList. We have Ms. Sarah Spits who wants to laugh maniacally while Rush Limbaugh dies of a heart attack while she watches his eyes bug out. Then there's Spencer Ackerman who thinksOr

"...throw[ing] Ledeen against a wall. Or, pace Dr. Alterman, throw him through a plate glass window. I’ll bet a little spot of violence would shut him right the fuck up, as with most bullies.

What is necessary is to raise the cost on the right of going after the left. In other words, find a rightwinger’s [sic] and smash it through a plate-glass window. Take a snapshot of the bleeding mess and send it out in a Christmas card to let the right know that it needs to live in a state of constant fear. Obviously I mean this rhetorically.

Obviously.

Mr. Ackerman is given to this kind of expression. Regarding a prior job at The New Republic:

... saying that he would "skullfuck" a terrorist's corpse at an editorial meeting if that was required to "establish his anti-terrorist bona fides"

Maguire ends

All of these secular libs will achieve an eternal electro-afterlife, since their words will live forever in Google. And Ms. Spitz's hands-down number one work will be her Limbaugh rant, which will perhaps amuse her grandkids one day.

Considering his esprit as well as well as the splash of his Web sites, it seems to me that Andrew Breitbart may be the Wililam Buckley of the Internet Age -- part journalist, part showman, part conservative visionary and ideological entrepreneur. He has an instinctive understanding of the media environment that is the base of the left's cultural monopoly and he means to do his best to overthrow it.

Slate has reposted its illuminating profile of Andrew here. James Taranto profiled Breitbart last year in "Taking on the 'Democrat-Media complex.'" In both profiles one can deduce the scope of Andrew's ambition and something of the genius he brings to the project.

Andrew has become a target of opportunity in the current affair involving Shirley Sherrod and the NAACP. The enormous weight of the Democrat-Media complex is seeking to crush him. One sees in Politico's "Breitbart: I am public enemy number 1" that Andrew understands precisely what is happening and that he declines to accept the role that has been assigned him in this shadow play. See also his performance on Good Morning America yesterday with George Stephanopoulos and left-wing Media Matters hack Eric Boehlert (video below, report and transcript here).

From Ann Althouse. It seems that FOX and Glenn Beck are living rent-free in the heads of Liberals.

As Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack tried to pressure her into resigning, Sherrod says Deputy Under Secretary Cheryl Cook called her Monday to say "do it, because you're going to be on 'Glenn Beck' tonight." And for all the focus on Fox, much of the mainstream media ran with a fragmentary story that painted an obscure 62-year-old Georgian as an unrepentant racist....

SAME AS IT EVER WAS.

Thursday, July 22, 2010

On the appropriate reaction to Leftards complaining about juxtaposed images of Hitler and Obama;

This means that when a Congressman Joe Wilson shouts "You lie!" at Barack Obama, you respond, "Representative Wilson was wrong. Obama lies a lot." It means that when the left bristles at a satirical letter to Lincoln, you understand that bold, fresh pieces of insanity will always hate satire. And, personally, do I really care that some Tea Party folks juxtaposed Barack Obama and Adolf Hitler on a billboard? Not really. I'm just not that concerned about Mr. Hitler's reputation.

Note to members of the MFM.You sucked before; now you suck and could be part of a sucker conspiracy.

One of the fascinating things about the JournoList fiasco is not that the members of the media are assholes. That was obvious for years. They are actually bigger assholes when they talk amongst themselves.

The second thing that interested me is that the list was limited ... only about 400 members. But this was not an elite crew. It included an obscure staffer for a public radio station in California who wanted to see Rush Limbaugh die in front of her so she could have an orgasm. So a legitimate question before us is this: until the names of all 400 are published, the jerk who writes or edits your local birdcage liner ... say one of the editors of the Virginian Pilot, could be a JournoList member who also gets his jollies hoping to see Conservatives die.

To all you non-JournoLister reporters out there, please be aware that your credibility has just taken a big hit, because we, your faithful readers, don’t actually know who is or who isn’t. You can thank JournoList for that, you can thank Ezra Klein, and you can thank the Washington Post, which has done its outstanding professionals absolutely no favors in any of this.

Richard Fernandez makes a compelling case that the reason that non-black support for Obama has melted like a snowball in hell is that his brand of economics does not work to the benefit of all the people. It works for some. Washington DC is a "boom city in a Depression." For the rest of the country, people desperate for work realize that

The fundamental weakness with President Obama’s theory of racial healing and social progress is that has assumed that America would always have the means to pay for its grand ambitions. With the arrow of redistribution flowing along racial lines from the relatively well-off whites to the latinos and blacks, ‘progressive politics’ in a depression may just be another word for “division and tension between black and white Americans”. When it became clear that Obama would not — could not — fix the economy; and when it became clear who was going to pay the bill for his social engineering, his supported melted away. President Obama doesn’t have a racial problem. He has an economic and ideological problem with racial dimensions.

The political ramifications of this are found in the polls:

While black support remains steady the other ethnic components of his base are falling away. What is astounding is the rate at which it has collapsed. White support was “as high as 60 percent as late as the week of May 10, 2009″. Two months later it it was below 40% and still falling. More interesting still are hispanic opinion trends which have followed the same downward trend as whites, albeit from a higher base. Interestingly, neither the President’s appointment of the “wise Latina” nor his war with Arizona helped him on a sustained basis.

For example, Hispanic warmth toward Obama hit its peak (85 percent) a few weeks before he nominated Sonia Sotomayor on May 26, 2009. By August, he was down in the 60s with Hispanics.

Similarly, in the weeks before Obama went to war against the citizens of Arizona in late April 2010 over SB1070, his Hispanic approval rating had been in the 60s. Now, it’s at 55.

As for the theory that illegal immigrants are doing the jobs that Americans won't, it turns out that "Americans are posing as Filipinos on Rent-A-Coder to find jobs." When times get tough enough and rent has to be paid and food bought, people are willing to work for less. If unemployment checks were to stop, a lot of jobs would be filled with Americans taking jobs that illegal immigrants now have. Under those circumstances, imagine the tension that would arise between those at the low end of the economic ladder and Illegal immigrants who have the jobs that Americans now want. It could very well be the reason why the Democrats are so anxious to extend unemployment payments beyond two years.

He concludes:

The problem is that his governing mental model may be founded in a lost world — in the Marxist critiques of the 1960s and 70s. It may have been forged at a time when Americans seemed obscenely prosperous in comparison to the denizens of the Third World. They were harmless eccentricities at the time. Today, in a globalized world where China, not America is on track to become the greatest consumer in the world; in a world where Americans and Britons pose as Filipinos to get jobs, it is nothing short of disastrous. His old categories of race and privilege and noblesse oblige are survivals from a bygone age. President Obama has made much of being the harbinger of the future. On the contrary, he may turn out to be a relic from the past.

It's also, by the way, why the hidden conspiracy behind JournoList is pissing so many people off. The media talking among down to us is irritating enough. The media talking amongst themselves is gut churning. Here's what a Public Radio employee Sarah Spitz said she would do if Rush Limbaugh were having a heart attack. Call 911? No:

In a post to the list-serv Journolist, an online meeting place for liberal journalists, Spitz wrote that she would "Laugh loudly like a maniac and watch his eyes bug out" as Limbaugh writhed in torment.

In boasting that she would gleefully watch a man die in front of her eyes, Spitz seemed to shock even herself. "I never knew I had this much hate in me," she wrote. "But he deserves it."

NPR has desperately tried to distance itself from the hatred that Spitz expressed, but the thing I wonder about is how such an unimportant cog in the taxpayer-supported media would be invited to join a fairly small group of Liberal Fascists determined to elect Obama and shut down Fox News.

Wednesday, July 21, 2010

SPENCER ACKERMAN: Let’s just throw Ledeen against a wall. Or, pace Dr. Alterman, throw him through a plate glass window. I’ll bet a little spot of violence would shut him right the fuck up, as with most bullies.

JOE KLEIN, TIME: Pete Wehner…these sort of things always end badly.

ERIC ALTERMAN, AUTHOR, WHAT LIBERAL MEDIA: Fucking Nascar retards…

Nov. 12

Keep in mind that these people are the best of Liberaldom. Read the whole thing.

The U.S. Navy has successfully tested a new weapon that uses high powered laser beams that are capable of destroying high speed planes and ships. The successful test was demonstrated today at an aerospace convention in the United Kingdom where a video showing the weapon destroying a test drone was screened.

PORTSMOUTH, R.I.--If you thought laser weapons were just military writer's futuristic fantasy, think again. On Tuesday, Raytheon and the U.S. Navy announced that they have successfully used a high-power, solid-state laser, in conjunction with a Phalanx Close-in Weapon System, to knock four UAVs out of the sky off the coast of California.
The system was electrically powered, and Raytheon said it offers the military a very cost-efficient and nearly unlimited "magazine" for shooting down things like threatening UAVs, or perhaps airplanes. "Once development is completed," Raytheon said in a release, "the Laser Area Weapon System will give the warfighter a speed-of-light solution for defeating rockets, mortars, UAVs, and other targets."

Did the participants in JournoList hijack their employer's resources for political ends, or were their employers willing accomplices? Here's James De Long's take

The real problem with JournoList is that much of it consisted of exchanges among people who worked for institutions about how to best hijack their employers for the cause of Progressivism. Thus, the J-List discussion revealed yesterday in the Daily Caller was about how the group could get their media organizations to play down the Reverend Wright affair and help elect Barack Obama.

Were I an editor of one of these institutions, I would instantly fire any employee who participated in this gross violation of his/her duty. For example, the J-List included Washington Post reporters, and the idea that the paper has been turned into a propaganda organ is a big reason it is bleeding readers and influence.

I believe this alternative explanation ...

Of course, it is possible that the Post’s editors were on the list, since the membership is not known, in which case the corporate executives should fire the editors, or the board should fire the executives, or the stockholders should fire the board. (If Director Warren Buffet was on J-List, I give up.)

If Shirley Sherrod gets her job back should Rush Limbaugh be able to buy St. Louis Rams?

The question being asked "should Shirley Sherrod get her job back" now that it's established that her racism is being called into question; that the full tape makes clear that she's not so much into pitting blacks against whites are rich against poor.

It's all about "context" you see, and the MSM so anxious to heep the racist label attached to the Tea Party that they're willing to throw Shirley under the bus so that they can go on making the Tea Party the home of racism in America.

Not so long ago, Rush Limbaugh wanted to be part of a group buying the Rams. But some people used made-upquotes to smear him. After he was dropped from the buying group, the media dropped the issue. Objective accomplished.

Now that we have established that context matters in determining is someone is racis, can we go a step further and admit that lies are also off-limits when we call someone a racist?

Question #1: If Shirley gets her job back, should Rush get to own part of the Rams?

Dr. Zero at Hot Air reminds us how blatantly biased the MSM was in dragging Obama over the finish line in 2008.

Fish gotta swim, birds gotta fly, progressives gotta try throwing a white sheet over Fred Barnes to save Obama from a scandal that should have finished off his campaign....

The Daily Caller has treated conservatives to the unique sensation of being shocked by revelations that don’t surprise us a bit. We’ve known this stuff was going on for years. The Reverend Wright story is one of many examples where media bias is easily detected by simply reversing the political alignment of the principles, and asking what the media coverage would be like.

It doesn’t take much effort to imagine the reaction to the discovery of John McCain’s twenty-year association with a chapter of the Klan, followed by a major speech in which McCain described the Kleagle as “an occasionally fierce critic of American domestic and foreign policy,” whom he could “no more disown than he could disown the white community.” If that wasn’t enough to fill newsrooms with stroke victims, the craven decision to throw the Kleagle under the bus a few days later, after one more outrageous statement, would have done the trick.

And this is good: moderates will begin wondering how they managed to vote for Obama...

A rational, informed electorate wouldn’t have allowed Obama to survive the Reverend Wright scandal. A great deal of media manipulation was necessary to slip him past such obstacles, and into the White House. It will be somewhat comforting to think it was all an expensive prank by the JournoList frat boys.

When you get journalists away from their editorial masters, it's amazing how they actually sound.

When the writer Victor Davis Hanson wrote an article about immigration for National Review, for example, blogger Ed Kilgore didn’t even bother to grapple with Hanson’s arguments. Instead Kilgore dismissed Hanson’s piece out of hand as “the kind of Old White Guy cultural reaction that is at the heart of the Tea Party Movement. It’s very close in spirit to the classic 1970s racist tome, The Camp of the Saints, where White Guys struggle to make up their minds whether to go out and murder brown people or just give up.”

The very existence of Fox News, meanwhile, sends Journolisters into paroxysms of rage. When Howell Raines charged that the network had a conservative bias, the members of Journolist discussed whether the federal government should shut the channel down.

“I am genuinely scared” of Fox, wrote Guardian columnist Daniel Davies, because it “shows you that a genuinely shameless and unethical media organisation *cannot* be controlled by any form of peer pressure or self-regulation, and nor can it be successfully cold-shouldered or ostracised. In order to have even a semblance of control, you need a tough legal framework.” Davies, a Brit, frequently argued the United States needed stricter libel laws.

“I agree,” said Michael Scherer of Time Magazine. Roger “Ailes understands that his job is to build a tribal identity, not a news organization. You can’t hurt Fox by saying it gets it wrong, if Ailes just uses the criticism to deepen the tribal identity.”

Jonathan Zasloff, a law professor at UCLA, suggested that the federal government simply yank Fox off the air. “I hate to open this can of worms,” he wrote, “but is there any reason why the FCC couldn’t simply pull their broadcasting permit once it expires?”

The debate about health care in the US always involves statistics from international organizations and one of the most frequently cited is the World Health Organization (WHO), an arm of the United Nations (UN). In its latest report it ranks the US #37, behind #1 France, #2 Italy and #3 Andorra. These "unbiased" statistics are always cited to close debate about whose health care system reigns supreme; anyone who disagrees is accused of being uninformed, biased or in the pocket of Big Pharma.

The issue is sensitive for WHO because its director-general, Margaret Chan, praised the communist country after a visit in April and described its health care as the "envy" of most developing nations.

Amnesty International, on the other hand, describes North Korean health care this way ...

Amnesty's report on Thursday described North Korea's health care system in shambles, with doctors sometimes performing amputations without anesthesia and working by candlelight in hospitals lacking essential medicine, heat and power. It also raised questions about whether coverage is universal as it — and WHO — claimed, noting most interviewees said they or a family member had given doctors cigarettes, alcohol or money to receive medical care. And those without any of these reported that they could get no health assistance at all.

WHO learned from Obama after the election of Scott Brown to the "Kennedy Seat" in Massachusetts. Remember how he said the election of Brown confirmed the fact that the people were angry about Bush and that's why Brown was elected? So WHO ("North Korea is the envy of the developing world") and Amnesty ("North Korean medical care is a shambles") were really saying the same thing.

Garwood and WHO spokeswoman Fadela Chaib insisted that Amnesty's report was complementary to their boss' observations, and sought to downplay Chan's praise for North Korea. Instead, they focused on the challenges she outlined for North Korea, from poor infrastructure and equipment to malnutrition and an inadequate supply of medicines.

In the end they gave the game away. Just as CNN whitewashed Saddam Hussein's Iraq just to maintain access to that country, WHO does the same for North Korea.

Asked Friday what countries were envious of North Korea's health, Chaib said she couldn't name any. But she highlighted the importance of maintaining the health body's presence in the country, where officials do their best to save lives despite "persisting challenges."

"We are an organization dealing with member states, and we respect the sovereignty of all countries," Chaib said. "We need to work there to improve the lives of people."